The leader of the intellectual group the “New Humanists” which, during the flowering of modernism, tried to spur interest in the classics, was Irving Babbitt, professor of romance languages at Harvard from 1894 to 1933.
The Dublin theater known as the Abbey Theatre dedicated to presenting Irish drama opened in 1904. Its directors included William Butler Yeats and Lady Gregory. Destroyed by fire in 1951, the theater reopened in 1966.
Langston Hughes’ poem “Harlem” (1951) refers to a “raisin in the sun”. Hughes asks: “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?”
Four years separated the publication of Milton’s Paradise Lost and its sequel, Paradise Regained. The first was published in 1667, the latter in 1671.
The 1928 play, The Front Page, is about newspapers by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur is set in Chicago’s Criminal Courts Building.
Albany-born Daniel Quinn, the protagonist of Quinn’s Book, is the grandfather of Danny Quinn of Ironweed (1983). Ironweed is part of the Albany Cycle, which also includes Legs (1975), Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game (1978), and Very Old Bones (1992).
“Q” is the hypothetical source used by synoptic evangelists Matthew and Luke. Never found, it is believed to contain the sayings and stories that Matthew and Luke, but not Mark, share. The term comes from German Quelle, or “source.”